Search Results for: Human Rights Defenders

Pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats’ opportunity in disaster

     

Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »

You don’t defeat the virus by bleeding democracy

     

The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to alleviate demands for more democratic governance, respect for human rights, equality, an end to austerity, and meaningful steps to combat climate change and corruption,… Read more »

‘Viral Authoritarianism’? COVID-19 turns spotlight on democratic erosion

     

Seoul’s decision to hold the April 15 polls in the middle of a pandemic highlights South Korea’s status as a beacon of democracy in Asia. It stands in stark contrast… Read more »

The democracy undercutting China’s claims to superiority

     

China has been buying up ads on U.S. social-media sites and adopting online tactics reminiscent of Russian disinformation campaigns in an apparent attempt to shape the story internationally about the… Read more »

‘No civil society, no democracy’: Cuban activists detained

     

An award-winning Cuban dissident who was detained this week announced Thursday that he has been released without charge but barred from a planned trip to Europe for a meeting on… Read more »

Fostering resiliency for MENA civil society

     

The Gezi trial, where 16 civil society activists and human rights defenders face possible life sentences for attempting to overthrow the government, has been a “tragic case study of the… Read more »

How to target the Cubazuela axis

     

  Cuban civil society and human rights activists are expressing concern over the fate of former political prisoner Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina. Four days ago, the freelance journalist and human rights… Read more »

China’s annus horribilis: Authoritarian turn ‘challenges the world’

     

More than a dozen Chinese lawyers and activists are reportedly missing or were detained by authorities in the final days of 2019 as part of the Chinese government’s year-end crackdown… Read more »

Exposing the ‘dark reality’ behind Cuba’s medical missions

     

  The U.S. says it is pressuring Cuba to end human rights violations such as harassment of opponents of Cuba’s one party system. It also wants Havana to stop supporting… Read more »

Iran’s totalitarianism, weak civil society could prompt ‘social explosion’

     

Prominent Iranian artists, inside and outside the country, have reacted to the brutal crackdown of recent protests in Iran, The Independent reports (HT:FDD). Amnesty International says Iranian authorities are continuing… Read more »